A first stab at DNS config, very useful for dialup, cable-modem,
ADSL and similar users.

On Red Hat and Red Hat related distributions you can achieve the
same practical result as this HOWTO's first section by installing the
packages bind, bind-utils and caching-nameserver. If
you use Debian simply install bind (or bind9, as of this
writing, BIND 9 is not supported by Debian Stable (potato)) and
bind-doc. Of course just installing those packages won't teach
you as much as reading this HOWTO. So install the packages, and then
read along verifying the files they installed.

A caching only name server will find the answer to name queries and
remember the answer the next time you need it. This will shorten the
waiting time the next time significantly, especially if you're on a
slow connection.

First you need a file called /etc/named.conf (Debian:
/etc/bind/named.conf). This is read when named starts. For
now it should simply contain:

// Config file for caching only name server
//
// The version of the HOWTO you read may contain leading spaces
// (spaces in front of the characters on these lines ) in this and
// other files. You must remove them for things to work.
//
// Note that the filenames and directory names may differ, the
// ultimate contents of should be quite similar though.
options {
directory "/var/named";
// Uncommenting this might help if you have to go through a
// firewall and things are not working out. But you probably
// need to talk to your firewall admin.
// query-source port 53;
};
controls {
inet 127.0.0.1 allow { localhost; } keys { rndc_key; };
};
key "rndc_key" {
algorithm hmac-md5;
secret "c3Ryb25nIGVub3VnaCBmb3IgYSBtYW4gYnV0IG1hZGUgZm9yIGEgd29tYW4K";
};
zone "." {
type hint;
file "root.hints";
};
zone "0.0.127.in-addr.arpa" {
type master;
file "pz/127.0.0";
};

The Linux distribution packages may use different file names for
each kind of file mentioned here; they will still contain about the
same things.

The `directory' line tells named where to look for files. All
files named subsequently will be relative to this. Thus pz
is a directory under /var/named, i.e.,
/var/named/pz. /var/named is the right directory
according to the Linux File system Standard.

The file named /var/named/root.hints is named in this.
/var/named/root.hints should contain this:

;
; There might be opening comments here if you already have this file.
; If not don't worry.
;
; About any leading spaces in front of the lines here: remove them!
; Lines should start in a ;, . or character, not blanks.
;
. 6D IN NS A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 6D IN NS B.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 6D IN NS C.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 6D IN NS D.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 6D IN NS E.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 6D IN NS F.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 6D IN NS G.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 6D IN NS H.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 6D IN NS I.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 6D IN NS J.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 6D IN NS K.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 6D IN NS L.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 6D IN NS M.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. 6D IN A 198.41.0.4
B.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. 6D IN A 128.9.0.107
C.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. 6D IN A 192.33.4.12
D.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. 6D IN A 128.8.10.90
E.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. 6D IN A 192.203.230.10
F.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. 6D IN A 192.5.5.241
G.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. 6D IN A 192.112.36.4
H.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. 6D IN A 128.63.2.53
I.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. 6D IN A 192.36.148.17
J.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. 6D IN A 198.41.0.10
K.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. 6D IN A 193.0.14.129
L.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. 6D IN A 198.32.64.12
M.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. 6D IN A 202.12.27.33

The file describes the root name servers in the world. The servers
change over time and must be maintained now and then. See the
maintenance section for how to keep it up to date.

The next section in named.conf is the last zone. I will
explain its use in a later chapter; for now just make this a file
named 127.0.0 in the subdirectory pz: (Again, please
remove leading spaces if you cut and paste this)

The sections called key and controls together specify
that your named can be remotely controlled by a program called
rndc if it connects from the local host, and identifis itself
with the encoded secret key. This key is like a password. For rndc
to work you need /etc/rndc.conf to match this:

The `search' line specifies what domains should be searched
for any host names you want to connect to. The `nameserver' line
specifies the address of your nameserver, in this case your own
machine since that is where your named runs (127.0.0.1 is right, no
matter if your machine has another address too). If you want to list
several name servers put in one `nameserver' line for
each. (Note: Named never reads this file, the resolver that uses named
does. Note 2: In some resolv.conf files you find a line saying
"domain". That's fine, but don't use both "search" and "domain", only
one of them will work).

To illustrate what this file does: If a client tries to look up
foo, then foo.subdomain.your-domain.edu is tried
first, then foo.your-domain.edu, and finally foo.
You may not want to put in too many domains in the search line, as it
takes time to search them all.

The example assumes you belong in the domain
subdomain.your-domain.edu; your machine, then, is probably
called your-machine.subdomain.your-domain.edu. The search
line should not contain your TLD (Top Level Domain, `edu' in this
case). If you frequently need to connect to hosts in another domain
you can add that domain to the search line like this: (Remember to
remove the leading spaces, if any)

search subdomain.your-domain.edu your-domain.edu other-domain.com

and so on. Obviously you need to put real domain names in instead.
Please note the lack of periods at the end of the domain names. This
is important; please note the lack of periods at the end of the domain
names.

After all this it's time to start named. If you're using a dialup
connection connect first. Now run named, either by running the boot
script: /etc/init.d/named start or named directly:
/usr/sbin/named. If you have tried previous versions of BIND
you're probably used to ndc. I BIND 9 it has been replaced with
rndc, which can controll your named remotely, but it can't start
named anymore. If you view your syslog message file (usually called
/var/log/messages, Debian calls it /var/log/daemon,
another directory to look is the other files /var/log) while
starting named (do tail -f /var/log/messages) you should see
something like:

This time dig asked your named to look for the machine
pat.uio.no. It then contacted one of the name server machines
named in your root.hints file, and asked its way from there. It
might take tiny while before you get the result as it may need to
search all the domains you named in /etc/resolv.conf.

As you can plainly see this time it was much faster, 4ms versus
more than half a second earlier. The answer was cached. With cached
answers there is the possibility that the answer is out of date, but
the origin servers can control the time cached answers should be
considered valid, so there is a high probability that the answer you
get is valid.

All OSes implementing the standard C API has the calls
gethostbyname and gethostbyaddr. These can get information from
several different sources. Which sources it gets it from is
configured in /etc/nsswitch.conf on Linux (and some other
Unixes). This is a long file specifying from which file or database
to get different kinds of data types. It usually contains helpful
comments at the top, which you should consider reading. After that
find the line starting with `hosts:'; it should read:

hosts: files dns

(You remembered about the leading spaces, right? I won't mention
them again.)

If there is no line starting with `hosts:' then put in the one
above. It says that programs should first look in the
/etc/hosts file, then check DNS according to
resolv.conf.